DePauw University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

DePauw has an institutional repository (Digital Commons) to host works by faculty, students, and staff. Our repository currently holds 329 papers authored by faculty, students, and staff from a variety of disciplines at DePauw. Submissions are added on an ongoing basis by our Coordinator for Cataloging and Scholarly Communications. Items in the repository have been downloaded nearly 33,000 times by folks around the world.

The faculty of DePauw University is committed to disseminating the results of its published research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the faculty adopts the following open-access policy:

Each faculty member will, henceforth, retain – where feasible and appropriate – copyright privileges with respect to his or her scholarly articles. Whenever possible, faculty authors will negotiate open-access agreements with scholarly publishers. Whenever and wherever faculty authors negotiate open access agreements with a publisher, said authors will henceforth grant to DePauw University special permission to make available his or her scholarly articles in the university's institutional repository. (For the purposes of this Open Access policy, scholarly articles are understood to be articles published in peer-reviewed journals).

Each faculty member grants to DePauw University a non-exclusive worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a proÞt. The policy applies to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the author is a member of the faculty. As the copyright holder of the article, the faculty author maintains the exclusive and irrevocable right to withhold from DePauw University the granted worldwide license for any given article provided that the faculty author submit the appropriate waiver to the Vice President for Academic Affairs or the Vice President for Academic Affairs' designate.

The policy does not apply to: any articles completed before the adoption of this policy; any articles for which the faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy; or any articles for which the author requests a waiver. The Vice President for Academic Affairs or the Vice President for Academic Affairs' designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article or delay access to said article for a specified period of time upon express direction by the author.

To facilitate access to his or her scholarly articles, authors will provide one electronic copy of the Þnal peer-reviewed version of each article for which no waiver has been obtained, along with the appropriate bibliographic data. This electronic copy will, whenever practical, be delivered no later than the date of publication for the article to the appropriate representative of the Vice President for Academic Affairs' Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by Library and Academic Technology Committee in consultation with the Vice President for Academic Affairs' Office.

The Vice President for Academic Affairs' Office may make the article available to the public in an open-access institutional repository for as long as the faculty author and copyright holder grants such access. The current policy is in no way intended to hinder faculty efforts to publish their work in the best peer-reviewed scholarly journals but is, rather, an attempt to make articles more widely available, when and where possible. The faculty-led Library and Academic Technology Committee will maintain responsibility for protecting faculty interests and overseeing the operation of the repository as well as interpreting this Open Access policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the faculty from time to time.